


I can't let you die

by EliaAlice



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: 4x09 "The Devil You Know", Deleted Scenes, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 03:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2676656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliaAlice/pseuds/EliaAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deleted scene for POI 4x09, my take on how Root takes Shaw back to the station after she's drugged her. More like 2000 words of Root feels. You've been warned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I can't let you die

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be fluffy, as I imagined Root looking at Shaw on the bed with tender eyes for God knows how long. Don't ask me how it turned out angsty, I sincerely don't know. Blame Root.

"You can end me all you want, right after you nap."

Shaw lost control of her body as she drifted into unconsciousness in the hacker's arms.

Root accompanied Sameen's fall, not even trying to hide the tenderness is her gestures. She held the other woman close for a while, simply looking at Shaw's relaxed features and enjoying the contact of their bodies.

She had no regret about what she had just done ; this had been the only way to prevent Shaw from getting herself killed. Still, Root knew very well that the other woman would not forgive her easily for this, if she ever did. She briefly wondered if this was the last time she would ever be so physically close to Shaw, and her chest hurt at the idea, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Root lowered Shaw's unconscious body to the ground gently and got up, her eyes never leaving the other woman's face. There was a small smile at her lips, its meaning somewhere between fondness and sadness, and she closed her eyes as she took a deep breath. She had to force herself to concentrate on something else than the fact that she could have just irremediably broken the fragile bond that she had managed to patiently create between Sameen and her. There was no time for these kinds of thoughts at the moment. The priority was to get the other woman back to the subway station.

Root hated the fact that she had to leave the other woman alone for a few minutes, but she also knew that she was on her own on this and hurried out, rapidly hotwiring an old car that was parked at the end of the alley and pulling it right next to the door.

Once back inside, she carefully lifted Shaw off the ground and in her arms. She made no effort to hide the softness of her actions. There were no witnesses and for once Root could stop hiding behind the innuendoes, stop pretending it was just a game because she would otherwise be too obvious and freak Shaw out. For once she was true to herself and she tried not to think about how Sameen would react to her betrayal as she carried her unconscious body to the car, laying her down on the back seat. Her feelings for the shorter woman were shamelessly seeping into her gestures and Root had to force herself to stay focused on the urgency of the task at hand. She shook her head slightly before extracting herself from the car.

"How are you such a fool ?" she whispered, and she didn't even know who she was talking about, if she was scolding Sameen for her never-ending will to go on suicide missions or herself for falling for the other woman in the first place.

The trunk of the car offered Root some old stuff that had probably been blankets in a previous life and she scrunched her nose in disgust, using them to cover Shaw nonetheless. The chances she would be spotted laying on the back seat of the car were more than slim but Root didn't want to take any chances.

Careful not to hit Shaw's feet or legs, she closed the door and slid into the passenger's seat, her body more tense than it had ever been as she drove them to safety.

She pulled over near the entry of the abandoned subway station. There were fortunately very few people walking around since the place was rather isolated and she managed to avoid most questioning looks as she pulled Shaw out of the car. The busy New-Yorkers hardly cast Root a glance as she walked into the station. She mobilized all the strength in her body to carry Shaw down the stairs ; the woman might be small and rather light, but Root wasn't used to this kind of stuff and tiredness was starting to wash over her. She hadn't got to have decent nights for a long time now and her body was starting to protest.

She put Shaw down to open the gate and welcomed the respite, catching on her breath as well as she could before she resumed carrying the shorter woman to the bed. Once relieved from Shaw's weight, she sat on it and waited until she managed to fool herself into ignoring the exhaustion she kept feeling these days.

When she felt composed enough, Root tried to get up. She knew what she had to do next : ditch the car, go back to her current cover identity, keep on fighting the war against Samaritan… And yet she found herself unable to move, all her doubts and her tiredness and her fears overwhelming her at the same time as she had to leave Shaw here, Shaw who had been her only source of comfort since Samaritan had come online and the Machine had stop whispering in her ear, Shaw who was going to blame her and hate her the moment she was going to wake up. Her eyes watered against her will and Root fought hard to not let the tears shed. She couldn't afford such weakness, not when their situation was so critical.

She turned to look at the unconscious woman and took in the sight of Sameen's for once peaceful features. Watching Shaw sleep was something Root could never get tired of. She found comfort in it, it felt intimate, the kind of intimacy that Shaw could never give her while awake and that Root would never ask her to. Her mind started to wander and she recalled the night they had spent together a few weeks back, after Shaw had used the excuse of having to decontaminate the virus – a lame-ass excuse from someone who studied to be a doctor, really, but Root wasn't going to complain. Overall, the night had been put to much better use than the decontamination, but it had also been different than all the previous times. Ever since the attraction had won them over, the night before Samaritan had come online, their encounters had been brief and intense, with a desperate edge to it, a way to evacuate the tension they accumulated while maintaining their covers. But this time was different. This time, they had actually spent a night together. In the morning, Shaw had caught the hacker looking at her when she had woken up, and called Root out on creeping her out because of the way the hacker was gazing at her so intensely.

A small smile made its way on Root's face at the memories. She remembered with an incredible acuity everything that had happened that night, and let it all replay in her mind as the tension in her body started to relax a little. She took Shaw's hand in hers without really realizing it and her fingers started stroking the skin absently.

* * *

 

Shaw telling her she was creeping her out had sounded oddly familiar and it had taken Root less than a second to remember when she had already heard that. The teasing had been out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

"And here I thought you preferred the perky psycho."

Having her own words thrown back at her had taken Shaw off-guard and she hadn't answered immediately, first rolling her eyes and sighing in frustration.

"I take that back", she had finally groaned, turning the hacker's playful smile into a smirk.

"You don't mean that", Root had almost sing-songed then.

"Root, it's way too early for this", Shaw had half-complained, half-threatened, the warning in her voice clear.

And even though Root knew it, knew that Shaw normally never spent the night and did even less mornings after, knew that she was walking a fine line, knew that she shouldn't push it, she had found herself unable to resist.

"Well", she had pouted, "you're right, it wasn't nice of you to call me a perky psycho in the first place. Now, I can probably forgive you because you called me a nice nickname in the same sentence, but then again I don't think –"

A split second after Root's ears had processed a groan, Shaw's lips had crashed on hers, effectively shutting her up, and the hacker had grinned into the kiss, only fuelling Shaw's exasperation a bit more. Biting on Root's lower lip had turned out to be a good way to wipe the smile from her face, and things had heated up quickly from that moment on.

* * *

 

Root snapped back to reality then, unwilling to consider that with the way things had escalated in the course of a single day, this could have very well been their last time. She knew that she had betrayed Shaw's trust by drugging her that way and she also knew that she would do it again without a second of hesitation, because there was no way she was letting Shaw get herself killed in this war under her watch, even if meant sacrificing her own life in the end.

Water filled her eyes again and, just like a few minutes earlier, she stubbornly refused to let the tears fall. She had accepted her fate a long time ago, but now that she knew what it was like to have things to live for, it made it more difficult. She also knew that it wasn't the eventuality of her own death which had watered her eyes, but the fact that she could die without having made things right with Shaw. She briefly wondered if it would even mean something to the other woman, before pushing the thought aside resolutely. These kinds of thoughts weren't helping.

Instead, Root replayed the earlier events in her mind ; the way Sameen had stayed in her arms in the truck until she had gone too far with the cuddling, how she hadn't protested when she had grabbed her arm… How she had tried to get under her skin by being the one to flirt for once, how good it had felt and also what it meant.

"Seems like you do know already, huh ?" Root whispered, so low that it almost didn't reach her own ears.

She bit hard on her lower lip as hurtful thoughts came back, her mind wandering without her permission and wondering how much of a step back this drugging thing was going to cause between them both. Root struggled to take the control of her train of thoughts again, focusing on how warm Shaw's body had felt against hers, finding comfort in the happy memories as her eyes never left the other woman's face. She lost the notion of time, her hands still gently stroking Sameen's and her body relaxing to the sound of Shaw's slow and steady breath, revelling in the fact that she could be openly displaying the extent of her feelings for once, without having to fear Shaw waking up and catching her like that.

* * *

 

Eventually, Root found her way back to reality and sighed sadly as she let go of Shaw's hand after a last squeeze, getting up and ready to leave the abandoned subway station. She knew she should have gone way sooner, immediately even, but this was something she couldn't have resolved to. This might have been the last time she was seeing Shaw for all she knew, and more certainly, it was the last time she could get comfortable physical interactions with her for a while. She was fairly positive that Shaw would be wary of her in the near future, and definitely not allowing the kind of closeness they had shared earlier.

Before turning around, Root allowed herself a last gesture of pure tenderness as she bent over, replaced a bang of hair behind Shaw's ear and laid a kiss on her forehead, something she would have never dared to do if the other woman had been conscious.

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you die", Root whispered before turning around, and it sounded more like a promise than an apology.

She walked away then, using her phone to finally update Finch on Shaw's status and forbidding herself to think about her own situation, about how spending time with Shaw was the only thing that had managed to keep her grounded despite the Machine's absence until this point, not willing to figure out how she was going to hold on now yet. Her chest tightened at the thought and she suddenly had to take deeper breaths to keep the oxygen coming to her brain properly.

She closed the gate behind her and to her ears the sound was sinister, as if she was leaving behind all happiness and heading into an even darker world now, a world in which she was probably going to end up dead sooner rather than later.

As she began walking up the stairs, she couldn't help but think that dying while protecting Shaw would be the best death she could have ever wished for. The two tears that were threatening to fall since she had gotten here a few minutes – or was it hours ? she didn't know – earlier finally ran down her cheeks then, and she wiped them off furiously, decided to face her destiny with her head up, no matter what was awaiting her.

Whatever comfort she had found in Shaw this day was already severely crumbling though, and she wondered how longer she could go on now before this war swallowed her whole.


End file.
